Tender – Call for Proposals: Survey researcher needed

The Global Alliance is conducting an open tender for procuring an Individual Consultant or Consultancy Firm to conduct face-to-face interviews with enterprises in Cartagena, Colombia aiming to capture the total transport and logistics costs (TTLC) along the supply chain of automotive, food and beverages sectors. The deadline for applications is 02 November.

This opportunity has now closed.

Terms of Reference / Scope of Work

Assignment: Administration of TTLC Survey in Colombia

Contract duration: 05.11.2018 – 14.12.2018

Alliance lead: Wayne Amago Bacale

1. The Project background

The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (the “Alliance”) is an initiative jointly hosted by the World Economic Forum, International Chamber of Commerce and Center for International Private Enterprise. It is a public-private platform to leverage business expertise and leadership to support effective trade facilitation reforms in developing and least developed countries. The Alliance (launched in 2015 at the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi) benefits from the financial support of 5 donor governments: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.

The Alliance has launched a number of projects in developing countries to engage both the public and private sector in effective reform processes in order to implement the provisions of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). Conceived as a “data-driven” initiative, the Alliance highly values the collection of sound and reliable data and the piloting of innovative methodologies in order to orient and design its projects and assess their impact.

In Colombia, the Alliance is currently implementing two projects.

Establishing a Center for Trade Facilitation and Good Practices for the automotive sector -This project aims to address advance rulings in the automotive sector in Colombia through the Center for Trade Facilitation and Good Practices. Automotive industry importers and vehicle assembly companies have repeatedly raised classification, valuation and origin as their major concern at the border in Colombia. Although the government with the support of donors has taken steps to address them, Colombia still faces challenges and has not reached satisfactory levels of an advance rulings regime. These concerns range from the lack of harmonization of rulings and rare consultations between Colombian Customs and automotive industry, to poorly functioning appeals mechanism and challenges to communicating rulings to the public.

To address these challenges, the project will support Colombia in implementing a program for processing advance rulings focusing on tariff classification, valuation and rules of origin for the auto-industry.

Implementing a Risk Management System for inspection, surveillance, and control (IVC) at border crossings for INVIMA – One of the reasons that Colombian importers face high costs and expensive delays at the border is that authorities do not have a proper risk management system in place for inspection of food, medicine and medical equipment. At the time the project was designed, 100% of imports/exports of food, medicine and medical equipment items in Colombia are subject to heavy intervention by the Colombian National Food and Drug Surveillance Institute (INVIMA). This project aims to upgrade the existing inspection procedures and then automate them with the help of a new risk management system (RMS). The proposed project would apply to the importers and exporters of food, medicine, medical equipment and cosmetics. This RMS project will support INVIMA in Colombia to: (a) increase inspection efficiency by allocating efforts based on level of risk, reducing inspection times by a third (1/3) in all border crossings of entry; (b) increase product knowledge for INVIMA officers by creating a historical record of manufacturers, importers, exporters, and countries of origin; (c) reduce cost of inspection and transaction cost for low-risk consignments; (d) improve the speed of INVIMA’s inspection process, thus facilitating trade by reducing transport times and improving predictability; (e) automate the proper collection and recording of historical data, thus providing traceability for all applicable products entering Colombia; (f) create a more accurate risk assessment by combining findings with the current model of physical inspections and document reviews.

2. Background info on the assignment

Together with the A.P. Møller – Mærsk Group, the Alliance has designed a new methodology aiming to capture the total transport and logistics costs (TTLC) along the supply chain of specific sectors and trade corridors, focusing on the estimation of both the direct and the indirect costs due to delays and lead times at the border. The collection of data for the TTLC study happens both from transaction-level databases held by the public and private sector (when possible) and through structured interviews conducted with local companies.

3. Required profile

The Alliance is seeking to retain an Individual Consultant or Consultancy Firm to conduct face-to-face interviews based on the questionnaire elaborated to complete the TTLC study. Bidders will have to prove:

The researcher or research team must have conducted at least ONE complex and long face-to-face interviews with private businesses.

The researcher or a member of the research team must have at least 2 years’ demonstrated experience on setting up appointments for interviews among private companies. Contacts with private sector networks would be an advantage.

The researcher or a member of the research team must have formal training or a year experience on the trade supply chain and logistic in Colombia. Experience in the Cartagena Port and the neighbouring ports would be an advantage.

The team leader must have at least 3 years’ experience related to import and export processes at ports

The researcher or team must have a demonstrated ability to move within the Cartagena area. Priority will be provided to bidders based nearby Cartagena area.

The research team must have demonstrated digital skills and ability to administer the survey through a tablet.

4. Tasks of the consultant

The consultant will work with the TTLC team, the Alliance country manager and local partner stakeholders to conduct structured interviews on the basis of the questionnaire and the sample frame provided. Her/his tasks will include:

Attend virtual TTLC orientation sessions; pilot test the instrument to at least ten interviews with selected companies; and a follow-up/virtual training session on the online survey platform to be used for data collection (Qualtrics) as we well as on the details of the questionnaire.

Schedule and conduct structured face-to-face interviews with clearing and forwarding agents, shipping lines, truck companies and importers on the basis of the company lists and sample frame provided by the Alliance. For every interview, it is estimated that the following time allocation will be necessary:

60 minutes for coordination with TTLC team and local stakeholders and scheduling of the interview with businesses

240 minutes for roundtrip transport within the Cartagena area

60-90 minutes for conducting each face-to-face interview

Throughout the data collection period, the consultant is also expected to join biweekly conference calls with the rest of the TTLC team to exchange information on the progress of the data collection.

The final survey will be provided to the consultant in a digitized form on an online survey platform (Qualtrics) and the consultant is expected to use a tablet or laptop to administer it during face-to-face interviews. It is highly recommended that the consultant administers the survey directly through the online platform and not on paper. Alternatively, she/he can enter the information on the online platform at a later stage.

Seventy-five (75) face-to-face interviews shall be consistent with the following structure:

Participate on three virtual training sessions (max 2 hours each) with Alliance team on the week of 5th November 2018

Complete 75 face-to-face interviews by 14th December 2018

Participate in by-weekly progress 30’ calls between 15th October and 14th December 2018

6. Confidentiality clause

Dataset and methodology shall remain confidential and shall exclusively be used in the context of this project.

7. Contract and selection process

The Consultant will be chosen on the basis of her/his technical qualifications and competitiveness of the financial proposal to ensure high quality outputs and deliver value for money. In terms of the financial proposal, in order to participate in the bidding process, bidders will have to propose:

a per day cost (for deliverable (a))

a per survey cost (for deliverable (b))

a per hour cost (for deliverable (c))

The table below highlights the scoring criteria.

Candidates are requested to submit the following by 02 November, 2018 to the Alliance project lead, Mr Wayne Amago Bacale (Wayne.AmagoBacale@weforum.org).

A brief description (max 2 page) on how the candidates meet the required profile (item 3)

An up-to-date Curriculum Vitae (CVs) or company profile

Financial Proposal (in USD)

The bid for this contract shall not pass the maximum budget of 6,500 USD.

Technical score (max 55)

The researcher or research team must have conducted at least ONE complex and long face-to-face interviews with private businesses.

15

The researcher or a member of the research team must have at least 2 years’ demonstrated experience on setting up appointments for interviews among private companies. Contacts with private sector networks would be an advantage.

10

The researcher or a member of the research team must have formal training or a year experience on the trade supply chain and logistic in Colombia. Experience in the Cartagena Port and the neighbouring ports would be an advantage.

10

The team leader must have at least 3 years’ experience related to import and export processes at ports.

10

The researcher or team must have a demonstrated ability to move within the Cartagena area. Priority will be provided to bidders based nearby Cartagena area.